U.S. pushes Mideast truce as fighting in Gaza Strip rages

A relative of a 2-year old Palestinian girl killed by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza Strip cradles her body at a hospital morgue in Beit Lahia.

FROM WIRE REPORTS

Published: 23 July 2014 11:31 PM

Updated: 23 July 2014 11:49 PM

JERUSALEM — As fierce fighting raged Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, Secretary of State John Kerry held his first face-to-face talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the start of the Israeli incursion.

Kerry flew to Israel from Cairo for a daylong flurry of meetings despite the Federal Aviation Administration’s order suspending commercial U.S. flights in and out of Ben Gurion, Israel’s main international airport. The FAA extended the ban Wednesday, and many major European carriers also canceled more flights because of security concerns.

Late Wednesday night, the FAA lifted the ban, saying that it "will continue to closely monitor the very fluid situation around Ben Gurion Airport and will take additional actions as necessary."

Heading into their talks in Tel Aviv, Kerry and Netanyahu appeared grim-faced as they briefly posed for photos, and they made no statements.

Earlier, Kerry traveled to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Last week, Abbas accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal that was rejected by the militant group Hamas, his partner in government, but in recent days he has tilted toward Hamas’ conditions for a truce.

“We will continue to push for this cease-fire,” Kerry said in Ramallah. “We have in the last 24 hours made some progress in moving toward that goal.”

Kerry also held talks with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who, like the U.S. secretary, is shuttling among regional powers to try to enlist support for a cease-fire in the 16-day-old conflict.

Hamas, however, remained defiant. In the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, the exiled leader of the group’s political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, denounced Israeli forces as “murderers” and said Hamas would accept a cease-fire only if it included a lifting of the years-old blockade of Gaza. Israel and Egypt enforce tight restrictions on movement in and out of the narrow coastal strip.

Israel, which had accepted the cease-fire proposal, has also insisted that it must substantially curb the military capabilities of Hamas, a position that appears to have gained support within the U.S. administration.

Israel, meanwhile, came under new international pressure from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which voted Wednesday to investigate allegations that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza. Earlier in the day, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, had said such an investigation was a “strong possibility.”

She also condemned Hamas and other militant groups for attacks on Israeli civilians. And she said it was unacceptable to place military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from them.

The United States abstained from the vote, and Netanyahu’s office called the U.N. council’s action a “travesty.”

Israel reiterated its contention that the rising death toll in Gaza — with about three-quarters of the fatalities thought to be civilians — was attributable to Hamas using Palestinian residents as human shields.

At least 74 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday and early Thursday, raising the overall death toll in the 16-day war to 702, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra.

Israel said three more of its soldiers were killed, bringing the military’s death toll to 32. Two Israeli civilians also have died, and a Thai worker in Israel was killed when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed near the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on Wednesday, police said.

Israel launched the incursion into Gaza in part to destroy a network of infiltration tunnels, far more sophisticated than previously known, that Hamas has been using to stage attacks in Israel.

In Gaza, the ground shook with heavy explosions as Israeli bombardment hit southern and eastern neighborhoods in the coastal territory. Israel carried out afternoon and evening bombings of Wafa Hospital in Gaza City, saying Hamas had turned the rehabilitation compound into a command center, weapons depot and a staging ground to fire on Israeli troops.

Basman Ashi, the medical center’s director, said that all 97 patients and staff had been evacuated after Israeli warnings and that no one was hurt in the attack.

Some of the most intense clashes took place around the northern town of Beit Hanoun, the east Gaza City neighborhood of Shajaiya, and Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

In Khan Younis, hundreds of people fled their homes as the battle unfolded, flooding into the streets with what few belongings they could carry, many with children in tow. They said they were seeking shelter in U.N. schools.

The International Committee of the Red Cross negotiated with Israel and Hamas to allow rescue workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent and Gaza Civil Defense authority to go into the areas to help evacuate trapped civilians.

Meanwhile, Israel’s national airline, El Al, added larger planes and more flights to its schedule Wednesday to accommodate passengers stranded by cancellations after the FAA ban on U.S. commercial flights into Ben-Gurion International Airport. The FAA took that action after a militant rocket landed near the airport.

El Al already was bracing for tens of millions of dollars in losses from an enormous drop in tourist traffic this summer.

Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and a prominent supporter of Israel, expressed his opposition to the FAA directive by flying to Israel on El Al on Wednesday.

Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, estimated that the hit to the Israeli tourism industry so far stood at $200 million.

To post a comment, log into your chosen social network and then add your comment below. Your comments are subject to our Terms of Service and the privacy policy and terms of service of your social network. If you do not want to comment with a social network, please consider writing a letter to the editor.